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Little of the news that emanates out of the nation’s capital, let’s face it, elicits either joy or excitement.

Well, Wednesday was different, at least for a certain segment of the Canadian sporting public. It was the day when, surely, the idea of the CFL returning to Ottawa went from fanciful to believable.

It was four long years ago that Jeff Hunt was first approved as the next owner of a CFL franchise in Bytown, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that the city cleared the final hurdle to renovate and rebuild Frank Clair Stadium as part of a larger Lansdowne Park project.

To those who remember Moe Racine and Whit Tucker and Gerry Organ and the quarterback combination of Clements and Holloway, this was a good news day, and not just for Ottawa.

The CFL, whether you love it, make excuses for it or find it to be something that only really strikes your fancy at Grey Cup time, surely needs this.

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It surely needs something. At a time when the league has become more financially stable than it has been in a quarter-century or more, the CFL has also become a little stale.

And really, what else could we have expected from a league forced to get by with only eight teams since the Renegades collapsed under the weight of the Glieberguys back in 2006?

Eight teams just isn’t enough in 2012 to create compelling stories and generate a sufficient variety of results.

There has been a trickle of noteworthy new stars in recent years, but hardly a tidal wave, which may be why the CFL game seems less explosive these days. Quarterbacking seems to be at a low historical ebb, the buzz in the Golden Horseshoe is muted at best and there hasn’t been a terrific Grey Cup game since 2005.

Off the field, there hasn’t been a boardroom assassination since Mike Lysko, and the days of Save the (insert team name here) Breakfasts seem to be over. No longer is there always an entertaining brushfire to watch, nobody’s bought a team lately so their kid could be the quarterback and the Buffalo Bills have proven to be more of a threat to themselves than they are to the sustainability of three-down football in Southern Ontario. Even the awkward dual ownership of David Braley is hardly a lightning rod for controversy.

So all’s quiet. And a little dull. And a little stale.

Will a ninth team make that much of a difference? Well, it’ll help. Moreover, it’s the 2014 return of Ottawa in a rebuilt park combined with all the other stadium projects across the league that should provide a needed jolt of excitement and a welcome facelift for the CFL over the next five years or so.

Already, B.C. has reopened a spectacular — and spectacularly expensive — B.C. Place. Winnipeg has fallen way behind schedule, but the new stadium for the Blue Bombers is gorgeous. Hamilton’s new stadium design will finally be unveiled Friday night at halftime between the Tiger-Cats and Lions, and while it won’t answer the question of where in the world the Tabbies will play next season, it will provide the city and the CFL with the blueprint for the future of football in Hamilton.

Regina, meanwhile, has unveiled plans to build a new 33,000-seat stadium by 2017.

So the return of Ottawa, and the potential impact, is probably best understood within that larger context of new stadiums and enhanced optics, plus getting Winnipeg back to the West Division. The Bombers are never going to click as a rival to any of the eastern teams.

The biggest trick, now that all the legal challenges have been beaten back in Ottawa, has to be for that team to be competitive as soon as it takes the field the season after next. The Renegades were 23-49 over four seasons and never made the playoffs.

Their predecessors, the Rough Riders, won the Grey Cup in 1976 then managed just one winning campaign over the next 20 seasons.

Hunt looks like he’s the right man to own the club, but the CFL has to play a leading role in making sure this team is stocked in such a way that it isn’t destined to five years of losing out of the gate.

The eight current teams will have to have a larger vision than just their own personnel needs. We’ll see if that can be achieved. Saskatchewan has already indicated it will block the use of the team name Rough Riders, which Hunt purchased from former owner Horn Chen.

Not a promising sign.

The CFL dearly needs the shot in the arm the new Ottawa franchise could provide. Too small for too long, the league could find one more team added in just the right way could feel like 10.

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